Arts

My Arts Projects

Legal notes:

COPYRIGHT NOTE:
This page provides links to sound files (.mp3 and .wav files, depicted with the symbol
), musical scores and stage scripts (.pdf files, depicted with the symbol
) which are all copyrighted by me. Private use of this copyrighted material is freely permitted (though without any explicit or implied warranty). Redistribution as well as public performance however requires the author's (i.e. my) written permission. Please contact me (see my
contact page
for contact information), if you want to redistribute or publicly perform my works.

DISCLAIMER:
All of the material on this page is provided for your information, but without any explicit or implicit warranty. This page contains external links to other sites. I provide these links just for your information, but I am not responsible for the contents of these sites. If a link points to a site with content that violates German or international law, please contact me (see my
contact page
for contact information), and I will remove that link.

Exhibition at UND #3 (2008)

Member of the “Poly-Galerie” (2008)

Since January 2008, I am member of the Poly Produzentengalerie e.V., Karlsruhe.

Member of the band “Die Psydologen” (since 2007)

On New Year's Eve 2006, I performed my debut as a member of the only recently founded band
“Die Psydologen”. Among other events, the band performed on the arts exhibition
UND #2. The band's style of music (or rather performance) is almost impossible to describe in traditional terminology of music or arts. At least to tell, the overall style is highly experimental, it features the greatest amount of improvisation, and it contains stylistic elements from a range of genres covering not less than punk, rock, pop, jazz, and more.

SoundPaint (2003/2004)

SoundPaint is a tool for creating sound collages by converting paintings into audio files. It is currently under heavy development; a first release is to be expected in spring 2004. It will be released as free software under GNU General Public License. [
More...]

MobiSong (2003)

In 2003, the
“Mobile Spielaktion Karlsruhe”
celebrated its 25th anniversary. Given the text and melody of a birthday song that the members of this institution already had created, I was asked to write and produce an orchestral arrangement of the song for them. The result can be heard
here
. You can view the (simplified) score of notes
here
, including the German lyrics.

Klarinetten-Slapstick (2001)

“Klarinetten-Slapstick” is the title of a stage play without words that I conceived, wrote, rehearsed and performed for the University choir's Christmas celebration in 2001. It is about two clarinet players and performs in the setting of a restaurant or cafe. The two main characters fail to fulfill their task of playing a clarinet duo due to slapstick-like misfortune.

The play starts with a piano piece that is closely connected with the story of the play. The score is here:
allegro_con_spirito.pdf

Variations on the Happy Birthday Theme (1999)

In 1999, I was asked to write a small serenade for the 70th birthday of the president of the
Badischer Sängerbund, Albrecht Münch. The result was a collection of small variations on the Happy Birthday theme for a capella choir. In the meantime, this work has been performed on various occasions.

Gregorian Chant for LilyPond (since 1999)

Since 1999, from time to time I contribute patches for
LilyPond, the GNU Music Typesetter. LilyPond is free software (released under the GNU General Public License) for typesetting musical scores and runs under many different operating systems (Linux, Windows, Mac, and others). My current focus is on making LilyPond aware of typesetting Gregorian Chant, but I also contributed patches for different flavours of music notation (e.g. ambitus and cluster notation) as well as more general ones including general bug hunting. Gregorian Chant is still not fully functioning; most notably, the spacing between ligatures screws up. Still, basic support for ligatures itself in the style of the Liber hymnarius is now more or less working.

Die Chorprobe (1998)

This is a small stage play that I conceived together with a couple of members of the University's choir for the Christmas celebration in 1998. The setting is a choir's rehearsal. The play illustrates some absurdities of a rehearsal in a sarcastic manner.

[Coming soon.]

1848/49 (1998)

This is a sound collage that I created in 1998 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the “Badische Revolution” in 1848/49. For this purpose, I developed a small command line tool in Java for transforming paintings into sound collages. The capabilities of this tool were somewhat limited. It only supported grayscale images on the basis of a purely sinoidal synthesis. Moreover, the complexity of the command-line parameters quickly grew until the program became hardly to control. Therefore, in late 2003 I started a new try called
SoundPaint. Still, I have here the sound collage and the images that I originally fed into the old program. The images serve quite well as an aural score. [
More...]

Col ha olam culo (1997)

This is a small musical piece for six voices (SSATBB) that I noted down while sitting on the lawn of a small park above the harbour of Haifa during a visit to Israel with the University's choir on September 5th, 1997. The arrangement is based on a short tune that our tourist guide sang during our visit. The lyrics mean: “Life is like a bridge. The main thing is not to fear it.” I slightly modified the tune (not only to correct some obvious rhythmical and melodical mistakes through the aural tradition) and then wrote the essential parts of this small piece in the park mentioned. I slightly revised the arrangement on September 8th after returning back to Karlsruhe.

[Coming soon.]

Metrisches Gewitter (1995)

In 1995, I produced a short piece that stylizes the idea of a thunder storm into electronic music. This work abstracts from a natural thunder storm (instead of just imitating it) in mainly three aspects: (1) it uses regular, well-designed rhythmic patterns based on a 4/4 meter; (2) the piece was produced solely by tweaking the sounds of the standard rhythm set of a
TG77
synthesizer; (3) the overall construction of the piece follows a strict formal pattern in assembling and disassembling the layers of sound. The result can be heard
here
.

Counterpoint Studies (1988-1994)

In the late 80s and early 90s, I wrote various small pieces to practice my counterpoint skills. One of these pieces is a
Fuga in G major
which I wrote on October 27th, 1994.

My Education in Arts

Education in Electronic Music

Education in Jazz

During
1984-1991, I took saxophone lessons. One of my lecturers was Peter Lerch, a member of the
Starlight Express
orchestra in Bochum. I regurlarly played in various local ensembles, among them the big band and jazz combo of the
Musikschule des Rhein-Lahn-Kreises.

Classical Instrumental Education

During
1982-1991, I took lessons in playing the clarinet at the
Musikschule des Rhein-Lahn-Kreises
with focus on interpreting classical instrumental music. I also participated in numerous instrumental performances, some of them under the supervision of Günther Obst, the father and teacher of the pianist and contemporary composer Michael Obst.

Vocal Education

As a member of the choir
St. Martins-Chor Bad Ems, I took lessons in vocal education during
1979-1982. The lessons were mostly hold by lecturers from the
Staatstheater Koblenz, among them Barbara Nöst and Edith Hartmann-Troppau. The choir was founded by Domkapellmeister Hans Bernhard and lateron conducted by Domkapellmeister Bernhard Weck, KMD Theo Schäfer, Domkantor Harald Schmitt, and others. The choir sucessfully participated in many demandful song contests, such as those of the
Pueri Cantores.

In
1982, I performed and interpreted the piece “Marienwürmchen” (from
Des Knaben Wunderhorn) by Robert Schumann (Op. 79, No. 13) in a classical concert — my first performance on stage as soloist.